By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times –
LOS ANGELES — The Federal Aviation Administration appears to be changing its rules about some air traffic control procedures in the wake of an incident last month involving three jets that got too close to each other at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
According to The Associated Press and Bloomberg News, a preliminary FAA report calls for the ending of “opposite-direction” operations, except for emergencies, until a standardized procedure can be put in place. There is no current national standard for the maneuver, in which controllers direct some planes to take off and land from opposite the usual direction.
The new policy follows an incident at Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., on July 31 when three US Airways commuter flights got too close to one another. Air traffic controllers had been changing the direction in which planes were landing and taking off because of bad weather.
Because of what officials called a miscommunication, controllers cleared two outbound flights to head in the same direction of an incoming plane. There were a total of 192 passengers and crew on the three craft.
Officials said the planes were closer than the required 1,000 vertical feet and 3.5 lateral miles of separation.
At a news conference after reports of the incident in The Washington Post, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and acting FAA Administrator Michael Huerta insisted that the planes would not have crashed into each other because they were on different headings.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the incident.
